+ We don’t yet understand either how to set or govern the rules of the new autonomous vehicle driving era – we need public debate before AV technology becomes widespread on our streets.

On the 10 February 2016 the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration agreed to classify Google's artificial intelligence system as the legal ‘driver’ of its automated vehicles (AVs). With this regulatory recognition, artificial intelligence and navigation systems’ future role on our streets seems assured. But I believe we don’t yet understand either how to set or govern the rules of this new driving era.

To date, safety has been the main concern. How will the AVs interact with pedestrians, cyclists and human driven vehicles? Most reported incidents involving a Google AV and another vehicle have so far been rear-end shunts, where a human driven car has driven into the back of an AV. Gauging other vehicles’ intentions is hard, and the AVs caution is understandable, but as any experienced driver will tell you, a dithery, traffic-shy driver doesn’t necessarily make for safer roads.

On any typical street there are hundreds of simultaneous intentions and interactions taking place at once. Adding AVs further complicates this situation. For example, how will pedestrians’ and cyclists’ behaviour change when they realise that stepping out in front of an AV will cause it to stop? And if AVs always play it safe, does this give human drivers an opportunity to take advantage of them? Worse, who would buy an automated vehicle that always loses out to person-driven cars?

Perhaps AVs will fare better on AV-only roads or in specific areas of a city centre. But even assuming this more constrained role for AVs we still have to decide how they will interact with each other.

A touted advantage of AVs is that they can travel tightly packed together, increasing road capacity and maximising passenger journeys at predictable speeds. But if an AV needs to change lanes and cannot find a gap in the traffic it will wait patiently. What if it takes ages for a gap to appear? Who decides how long it can hold up traffic before this becomes intolerable to passengers in other AVs?

Stationary AVs, trapped in their lanes, could actually cause traffic to worsen. Add in the slightly unpredictable behaviour of human passengers waiting to be picked up from the side of the road and you can imagine scenarios where vehicle stand-offs could last indefinitely.

The industry is trying to address these issues with vehicle to vehicle communication (V2V) systems and by building shared rules of engagement into the artificial intelligence of each AV. But who sets the priorities in the above scenarios? Will the rules be regulated by the state so that every brand’s AVs behave the same way? Or will different manufacturers be allowed to apply different behaviour parameters to their vehicles, perhaps meaning that a Google car will always give way to an Audi AV?

If we allow the commercial logic, or the price mechanism to intrude into the rules for AV artificial intelligence we run the risk of inventing a new level of inequality, where only the rich arrive on time. I believe a public debate is needed before the driver-less technology becomes widespread on our streets.

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Michal Nowinski

Well, there could be solution to avoid conflicts between AV cars and human drivers. I mean system like TCAS in aircraft. But it has to be mounted in all vehicles, with some kind of radar systems. In my opinion they should learn from air traffic accidents to avoid similar problems. Some time ago I saw test of radar automatic brake system in VW up, Volvo S40 and Mercedes S (or E) class. It could avoid the most common problem with collisions. I'm not afraid collisions I afraid serious accidents.I'm more afraid of reading signs, because they sometimes are too dirty or in different countries difference between speed and mass regulation sign is only small 't' letter. So in specific situation AV car can read '10t' sign like 10 mph or km/h value.

Anna Vickers

Hi Michal. Thanks for your comments. I do not think that avoiding conflicts will be difficult to solve with technology. Even in human driven cars, the collision avoidance systems are being implemented into new cars already. It’s almost the opposite problem – that by avoiding conflicts at all costs, the AVs may not provide the capacity and efficiency gains that it is hoped they will provide, and worse still, in a mixed fleet their ‘safety- first’ protocol could be taken advantage of by pedestrians or people driving cars.I think it’s fair to assume that when AVs become a commercial reality, they will not be required to ‘read’ signs. All of this information (one-way streets, speed limits, restricted access, height restrictions, and of course directional signs) will be associated with the vehicle’s location and route planning. Already all Sat-Navs include this information which can be used to tailor a route (eg avoiding tolls, or avoiding height restrictions) and is used for lane selection (when approaching a turn).

Ryan Falconer

Anna. A thoughtful piece, as always. I share a lot of your sentiments. The computing power that will be required for complex traffic management boggles the mind. Is it possible? Probably. But, as you note, some of the difficulties will come while the vehicle fleet is in transition and there's mixed traffic. As an extension to your discussion, even with dynamite computing power, how are urban kerbsides going to work; particularly where there are not multiple travel lanes? Personally, I like to draw attention to systems failure as well. We can talk all we like about 'fool proof', redundancy and emergency protocols but human experience shows that the best of intentions are no guarantee of problem avoidance. The more tightly coupled and complex we make systems, the greater the chances of systemic (and potentially cataclysmic) failure, either through design or hack. I like Charles Perrow's Normal Accidents. A hard read, but some eye-opening rationale.

John Moss

The whole scenario of the use of AVs suffers from the fact that it seems like a good idea to adopt them. The related engineering question, "what is it all for?" is not considered nearly often enough.

Well, OK, you can sometimes start with a concept looking for a use, but if you do, you have to be absolutely clear as to what your aim and intention is in every usage you consider. If it is to introduce a faster mode of individual transport then you have to make subsidiary provisions involving biases in everything from priorities to permissible usages. If it is to introduce another safety device then what you describe Anna is inherently part of the scene.

Alternatively if you start from the users point of view you have to analyse everything for which cars (buses and trains too?) are used for and try to synthesize (a.k.a design) a compromise optimum solution. With cars it varies from commuting, to demonstration of status, to that cage into which I as a parent can safely dump my children as I go to shop. These and all the other uses lead to the characteristics of the resulting traffic movement which will vary with time of day and the day of the week.

So I agree Anna you are so right, there must be proper public consultation, and I would add ideally an associated trial in a selected City. One of the choices that the public should be faced with is whether safety is or is not the overiding consideration, because leaning towards total safety at collision and pollution level does have considerable consequences. Similarly some people will think that the AV standard speed selected is too fast and some who think it is too slow. As with thermal comfort there will have to be some kind of median based choice.

Joerg Tonndorf

As a sceptic of the AV hype (don’t get me wrong, I think it’s a great idea, but it needs a lot more thinking and work) I appreciate any thought that looks beyond the obvious benefits and scrutinizes some of the aspects that are not fully resolved yet. Therefore, thanks a lot for your thoughts piece. I completely agree that the ‘social’ element of driving is just another issue that will need further thinking and development. Unfortunately, traffic flow is not the same as the flow of liquids. As Anna knows very well, we’ve always had this problem when trying to replicate human behavior in a traffic micro-simulation model. To some degree the micro-simulation model acts like all vehicles are AVs since every vehicle in the simulation is fully aware of all other vehicles around it. And often we have exactly the issue Anna described: vehicles simply react too cautious resulting in longer waiting times or queues than observed in reality or even if a vehicle is stuck in a queue, it does not leave a gap for another vehicle to get out of a side street, driveway or parking space.And this social aspect doesn’t just apply to AVs. The whole issue of smart travel based on more apps, more information and computerization needs to be at least challenged. A recent online article called ‘Welcome to the Metastructure: The New Internet of Transportation’ suggested that soon we will be moving about like bits and bytes with the transport network resembling the internet fully steered by apps, AVs, etc. The apps will tell us when to leave, how fast to go and so on and will influence our travel behavior. Will we accept this? If not, what happens if users then consistently overwrite (assuming this is still possible) the systems? Sorry for going slightly off track!

Anna Vickers

Hi Joerg. Thanks for your comments. I too am very excited, yet also cautiously sceptical about AVs – and the more I dig into the subject, the more unanswered questions arise. That is why I wanted to follow up my previous thoughts piece (wow AVs could revolutionise society!) with the one above (I’m not sure people have thought this through properly!) As a bit of an aside: Your statement “Unfortunately, traffic flow is not the same as the flow of liquids” really resonates with me (apart from the word unfortunately). That is precisely the reason that I give for leaving Civil Engineering (specifically drainage design) and becoming a transport modeller many years ago.

Anna Vickers

Hi David. Thanks for your comments. This article deals with the issue you raise, but also offers some technology solutions (albeit expensive) http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-autos-autonomous-infrastructure-insig-idUKKCN0WX12N The article (linked) also discusses the matter of different styles of traffic signal heads being confusing. This could be a short term problem because I think it’s fair to assume that when AVs become a commercial reality, they will not be required to ‘watch’ traffic signals to know when they are green. V2X communication will enable the cars to ‘know’ whether they have priority or not. Of course, this intelligent infrastructure upgrading will not be cheap.

David Weiss

This is a good reason to begin rollout as v2v in places or times restricted to equipped vehicles. Such might include high capacity lanes, roadways feeding a facility such as a depot and where merges can be done by alternating lanes.

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